On Tue, 3 Feb 2009, Andrew Heenan wrote:

"John B" wrote ...
On Feb 3, 12:27 pm, "Andrew Heenan" wrote:
- the failure to electrify Gospel Oak to Barking (and twenty other false
economies);

That's territorial fighting. The UK freight resurgence is diesel-based
(the EMD Class 66 is the single best thing to happen to UK rail freight
in c.100 years: it's cheap and it Just Works) so there's no benefit to
freight operators in electrifying it. The only operator who'd benefit
is TfL, but they're not willing to pay the full cost without any
control over the infrastructure.

Very wrong; the 'resurgence' needn't be diesel-based,

But it *is* diesel-based.

Everyone, in every camp (except diesel trainbuilders), would like it if it
was electric-based, and the necessary bits of line were electrified to
make that possible, but that hasn't happened, and nobody feels like paying
for it, so it hasn't happened. So the growth of freight *is*, whether you
like it or not, diesel-based.

tom

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